How many Republicans and Democrats are out there who have been alienated by their own party -- be they family or friends -- because you don't run 100 percent with the crowd? That if you are registered republican but were ridiculed because you have been caught defending portions of the Affordable Care Act? Maybe you are all for collective bargaining, but have been heard defending "the surge" into Iraq?

If you answer "yes" to these questions, you have befallen the same fate as I; told, "if you're not with us, you're against us;" if you don't believe in the entire platform of the party, you must be one of them! If you take offense to these sentiments, it's likely because you have noticed that the political spectrum has changed around you -- Democrats have become more liberal while Republicans vastly more conservative, leaving you in the middle.

But you are not the one who has changed. If you have seen "The Matrix", there's a part where a guru tells our protagonist that, in order to do amazing things, he has to remember that the Matrix is fiction; it's not he who leaps tall buildings, or stops bullets, it's the world around him that moves while he stays still.

Ladies and Gentlemen, you haven't moved in your ideology, everyone around you has.